


Jo. Ha. Kyuu.

by rightsidethru



Series: Steter Week 2017 [6]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Anchors, Canon-Typical Violence, M/M, Mates Peter Hale/Stiles Stilinski, Soulmates, Steter - Freeform, Steter Week, Steter Week 2017, Stiles Stilinski is Peter Hale's Anchor, Temporary Character Death, Werewolf Mates, Wordcount: 1.000-5.000
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-29
Updated: 2017-11-29
Packaged: 2019-02-08 08:57:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,696
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12861153
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rightsidethru/pseuds/rightsidethru
Summary: He dreams.He burns, always.He reaches for relief from the flames.(There is a boy.)





	Jo. Ha. Kyuu.

**Author's Note:**

  * For [red_crate](https://archiveofourown.org/users/red_crate/gifts), [Malapropian](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Malapropian/gifts).



> **_November 29:_ Soulmates, Mates, and Anchors AU -** By far the favorites of the theme suggestions, here is where lasting, deep, and abiding love and need come into play. What causes Stiles to become Peter’s Anchor? When did they find out they are each other’s soulmates? Are mating bites your favorite thing ever? Give us your spin on these awesome tropes!
> 
> *
> 
> I wanted to gift this fic to Mads and Mal as a thank you for organizing and hosting Steter Week 2017. :) The themes have been absolutely awesome to write for and, even when wank oozed out of the woodwork, you both handled things so professionally and coolly. Thank you for hosting the event--I've had a ton of fun!
> 
> The title refers to [Jo-ha-kyuu](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jo-ha-ky%C5%AB) in Japanese drama (amongst other things). This particular fic is me experimenting with a different style and tense, but I hope that you both enjoy it regardless.
> 
> Thank you again!
> 
> * 
> 
> Kudos and comments are loved and appreciated! <3
> 
> *
> 
> http://rightsidethru.tumblr.com/

_I don't believe I'll fall from grace_  
_Won't let the past decide my fate_  
_Leave forgiveness in my wake_  
_Take the love that I've embraced_  
[“I Am The Fire”](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8hkmuTvkp_s) \- Halestorm

++

**I.**

He dreams.

He dreams of the fire, of skin crackling, crisping—blackened and burning and withering away to show raw, bloody flesh beneath the thinnest of barriers that keeps his insides from being outsides. He dreams of pain, of agony, of a scream that never stops, never pauses, shreds his vocal chords until he’s rendered mute with mouth parted in a cry that only God ever truly hears. 

He dreams.

He dreams of the delicate curl of lilac, faint scent curling treacherously through the den for weeks beforehand. He dreams of furtive glances, awkward youth pushing into the first blushes of _true love_ , of destiny and hopeful romanticism. He dreams of a naïve nephew, a packmate who dooms him to endless pain—an ocean’s worth of helpless fury—just as he once-upon-a-time-ago gave that very same packmate eyes to match his own.

He dreams: dreams of twilight, of fog, of disconnect—shattered bonds, severed by death and rejection both. He dreams of loneliness, of unwanted touches. He dreams of searching—always, always searching, never finding and never found in turn—of something to ground him, lay the pathway for a foundation to build himself up again; he dreams and cries out for someone to hear (no one ever does) and he _burns_ , burns burns burns—always burning, crumbling to soot from the inside out until he’s dust to dust, nothing more or less than dust and ash: soil to birth something new.

He dreams.

He dreams.

He screams, raging at body and the universe, mute button struck over and over again until he’s nothing more than a broken man, feral and ravenous within the confines of his own mind and lifelessly still, breathing doll with limbs to move and maneuver and rearrange for perfect display, on the outside.

He dreams that he is consumed by the inferno, burning and bleeding and becoming one with it, rage catching fire and lighting the world to burn it all to cinders—salting the earth for measure because all that there’s left is spite and hate as he _burns burns burns_ everything and anything and becomes a caricature of the man he used to be. But he hates, and it is enough.

He burns and no one can hear his cries.

_Hey, Mom. I know… I know that you’re not really all… there… anymore. But Dad says that it’s still good to talk to you ‘cause my voice is something familiar and I need to be more understanding that you’re sick and… uh. Um, nevermind. I took a Social Studies test yesterday and already got the results back. The teacher says that I retain—that I remember and understand, she means—the information well, but that I have trouble focusing on one subject at a time. Dad’s thinking about maybe getting me tested…? I was doing some research online and I know that Wikipedia isn’t always reliable, but I found this article on ADHD and…_

The storm continues to rage on, but—for the first time since the fire—it feels as if he can finally _breathe_ again, cool water soothing his parched throat. A small relief is better than the nothingness of before, and he’s desperate for more—needing, greedy, craving the reprieve in a way that buries deep and sinks its claws in the marrow of his bones.

(There is a little boy who visits his ill mother, and things are perhaps a bit steadier when he is near. But then she dies and he _burns_ , bright and deadly and as unstoppable as a wildfire as his roar echoes a continent and eventually brings his would-be Alpha running back home.)

 

**II.**

He’s awake now, conscious and as aware as he possibly can be—circumstances notwithstanding—and he knows that what he’s done so far is _wrong_ is something that Talia would have never approved of, but his sister is dead (her daughter now, too) and he’s always been cut from a different cloth than the rest of his family (his pack, his pack, dead and gone and rejected as he _burned_ ).

There are pieces of himself scattered all about, sharp-edged reflections of who he used to be, what he could have been: none of them matter anymore, so he leaves them be, crushing them to silver-starlight dust underfoot. He’s power nowadays, surge of the moon’s call singing through his veins: teeth and fangs and blood-hued eyes that glowed with the heat of his hate; he’s a monster in all definitions of the word, shifted wrong—limbs lumbering and lopsided, ugly and malformed when his sister had been nothing but grace and predatory lines—and there’s enough of himself still in there, buried deep, to hate this thing that he’s become:

But the fire burns hotter, burns higher, stokes his rage and bloodlust both, and all he wants more than anything else is his revenge.

He Bites and Turns, takes others on a merry goose chase as he lies in wait in the shadows: nobody ever looks towards the broken man, the man whose blue eyes slowly alight with life, with ash-coated soul—he burned and burned and still burns, but managed to keep on surviving; it’s something that the hunter forgot, continues to forget, but he’ll remind her of it every last agony-soaked second of the last moments of her life. She’ll forget overlooking him, will regret thinking him nothing more than a fangless, declawed puppet, dancing to the nurses’ strings as they cart him all around the hospital for his weekly tests.

She’ll regret so very much, but most of all, she’ll regret leaving him this empty husk of a wolf, howling for a pack that never answers: alone and vulnerable and hungry for connection, and so much more vicious because of it.

He dreamed, not too long ago.

Now he’s awake, thirsty for the copper tang of blood in his mouth: craving the thrill of the hunt even as he takes down his family’s murderers one by one. There is no justice in this, only revenge, and he’s never been one for lying to himself, anyway. He wants blood, all of it, wants it to soak the earth to wet the ash, coaxing strangling brambles to life with the lives he takes as payment.

There is Judas. And thirty pieces of silver line the path between him and his nephew.

He burns, is always burning, howls to relieve some of the building, building, all-consuming pressure that fills up his chest and leaves echoing hollows of broken bonds behind—he is alone and he is Alpha and he is One—and he knows that the world has gone topsy-turvy as his bones rattle in his body, _clink clink clink_ of the nightmare hag’s bone dice, ancestral guardians whispering him home.

(But he burns too brightly, mouth too filled with blood for the graveyard dirt to take its place.)

It’s then, car exhaust heavy in his lungs and sweet tang of gasoline filling his nose with more and more poison—he’s nightshade and wolfsbane now, silver running in another’s veins and Death upon the ground—that something _new_ but old Sparks itself to life, and he stops with fangs bared and about to pierce the thin skin over a hummingbird’s frantic pulse, wrist held tightly between his own clawed fingers. He hears a stutter in a heartbeat, wants to still lean in and _bite_ and rip and tear and Claim, to turn and rekindle the rage within—forging unbreakable metal of new bonds, new pack, new Others because the One is breaking, piece by piece, and the power will consume the rage in the relentless destruction of a tsunami, swallowing everything in its wake.

He wants, he dreams, he _aches_ to Bite—

But the boy says **No.** and so he pulls away.

( _Mine_ , his soul whispers. _Ours_ , the beast snarls.)

 

**III.**

Peter’s grave gives way beneath his determined digging, and he breaks free of the shallow dumping ground: he gasps for air, filling his lungs to capacity for the first time in what feels like _years_. His skin is new and tender, thousands of sensations pressing in around him—clamoring for attention—and it almost feels as if he’s _burning_ again:

But he is the new life that has sprung forth from the ash and blood-soaked ground, darker and more twisted and hiding the ember of hate, but—so, too—there is nothing within him that can catch fire. He was nothing more than soot and charred bone upon his previous death, and now he’s something less than even that.

Brittle but hardy, a weed that cannot, refuses to, die—and Peter continues to claw his way up towards the worm moon high overhead, arctic chill of his too-blue eyes _freezing_ his nephew into place (because this world will end in fire and ice and Peter has already burned himself up for his nephew’s truest love) and, in this, _he will live_.

(There is a beacon lighting the night within the city, bright enough to chase away the shadows that midnight brings. It’s both warm and cool, Sparking through the tattered remains of his soul to croon a song that keeps him still, keeps him mesmerized and interested, and it is not long after that Peter finally realizes what that spider-web thin thread is—what calls to man and wolf and promises the wild and freedom and _home_ as he breathes in Stiles’ thunderstorm-rich scent while lightning blazes through him.)

 _Mine_ , his touch promises, butterfly-kiss tentative against the nape of the boy’s neck.

 _Catch me_ , amber eyes challenge, flaring brighter than the fire that’s already claimed him twice.

And man and beast and monster _dream_ and _burn_ and _hunt_ this piece of themselves that had long ago—years past, locked away in mind and body and hospital room—become essential to him.

 _Mine_ , and Peter finally has the clarity to _see_.

++

(Peter is naught but the moth and this boy is the flame that consumes him.)

::fin::


End file.
